The library scene is a staple of movies, often used to inform the audience that a certain character is well-educated, or in the case of a private library, whether in a home or a gentleman’s club, it’s used to establish that a character is rich. Ever wondered where they get the books for these scenes from? One source is New York’s famous bookstore, The Strand (whose slogan is “18 miles of books”), which offers a service called Books by the Foot.

There’s more on the service (recently used for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull) in a New Yorker piece titled Books in Bulk.

Screenshot from Rock Band. Click to see the screenshot on its original page at full size (it’s huge).

Let me get the tiny bit of disappointment that I have with the upcoming game Rock Band out of the way first: What? No keyboards? They’re the most computer-ready interface devices to make! You suck.

That little gripe aside, I’m looking forward to Rock Band, the next step in the evolution of the Guitar Hero game. While Guitar Hero let one player at a time “play guitar” and Guitar Hero II let a single player “play” either guitar or bass, Rock Band offers, Rock Band lets up to four people play simultaneously, each one taking the role of guitarist, bassist, drummer or lead vocalist. As you can see from the screenshot above, gameplay looks like a hybrid of Guitar Hero for the instrument roles and Karaoke Revolution for the vocalist role.

Joystiq has just published the news on Rock Band’s release date and price. Rock Band for the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3 will hit the shelves in the U.S. on Friday, November 23rd, with the PlayStation 2 version following on December 10th. November 23rd is “Black Friday” — for our non-American readers, this is the Friday of the American Thanksgiving long weekend. Being the last holiday before Christmas, it’s the biggest shopping day of the year and a day which puts a lot of stores “in the black”, hence the name. Shopping malls in the U.S. open ridiculously early on that day (we’re talking hours before sunrise) and the crowds are insane. Occasionally fights break out; perhaps the makers of Rock Band want shoppers to have the full rock concert experience — the Woodstock 1999 experience, that is.

The full Rock Band bundle will sell for the following consoles:

XBox 360: $170

PlayStation 3: $170

PlayStation 2: $160

The bundle will include:

The game itself (regular price $60 for the XBox 360 and PS 3, $50 for the PS2)

I think this is a pretty good collection of songs; a number of them are either in my accordion repertoire or were on the set lists of bands with whom I played keyboards.

Most of the tunes listed will use the original master tracks. I suspect that the game will use the bowlderized lyrics for Radiohead’s Creep (“You’re so very special” rather than “You’re so fucking special”), and I hope that Don’t Fear the Reaper has a special “cowbell” mode. I also think that The Perfect Drug might’ve been a better Nine Inch Nails tune, even if only to give the drummer a challenge (there’s a killer drum solo near the end of the song).

The inclusion of a tune by Boston-based synthpop band Freezepop seems a little odd — they’d fit better in a game that offered keyboard controllers. This may be a prank by a Wikipedia contributor.

Without Superman realizing it, Batman stuck a small Bat-transmitter on Superman’s cape. The device sent out a signal, and the Caped Crusader followed it to Clark Kent’s apartment. Superman was just getting ready for bed when he looked out the window and saw that Batman had sicovered his secret. Now the two of them had to trust each other.

In yesterday’s posting, Monkey Knife Fight, I point to an argument made by Elliotte Rusty Harold that Java’s java.util.List is more “humane” than Ruby’s Array since it has fewer methods. He posed the question “Which of these three remotes would you rather use?”:

There is, of course, a point where having too few buttons or controls is a hindrance. Which instrument would you rather play? This beastly thing with an ancient user interface sporting 88 buttons, each of which reacts with volume proportional to the force with which you press them, and three pedals?

Newspaper articles, pop-up ads and random number generators are a never-ending source of amusement. Consider the screenshot below, in which a Verizon pop-up ad blocks your view of an article about Verizon blocking the New York Times article Verizon Blocks Messages of Abortion Rights Group: